


That Good Night

by hulklinging



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Multi, a take on an ending, could be read as the five of them in love or more platonic love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6653275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulklinging/pseuds/hulklinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blue survives the final battle. She waits for the dawn and hopes her boys did the same.</p>
<p>(written pre-The Raven King release, my take on a series ending)</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Good Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is obviously heavily influenced by the poem Blue is thinking about, which is Do Not Go Gentle, by Dylan Thomas.

Poetry is something Blue doesn't often read.

She likes it, likes the way words seem to dance, how so little can say much. She's a fan of little things with big impacts. It just seems that you have to wade through so much... nothing in order to find something that hits you just right. Poetry is something that finds you, not the other way around. So she doesn't read it much.

Hugging her knees, waiting for the morning and everything it will bring, a poem she read once comes to mind. She's not sure how it found her. Maybe she saw it in a textbook, or scrawled onto the wall of someplace her and the boys had explored. Maybe Gansey had quoted it, late at night, whispering words into her ear during one of their not-so-secret phone calls. Maybe Noah had pointed it out in a moment of excitement, liking how the words all looked together.

She doesn't remember when it came to her, or where, but in this moment, waiting for the dawn, unsure who would still be alive to see it, she remembers every word.

_Do not go gentle into that good night,_  
_Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  
_ _Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

There's nothing gentle about death, as far as she's concerned. She's seen it, seen a faceless boy whisper his name along the ley line, seen a friend's skull cracked open as the woods tried to reclaim it, seen a skeleton army wake up with a word. She has seen death wear many faces and none of them felt gentle. Death offers no peace to her, she's too young and so are her friends (so were her friends, she doesn't know if any of them are still here in the present tense with her, and she can't move until dawn, won't know until the world wakes up around her), so she understands the rage, the fight to live. She hopes she's fought hard enough to stay. She hopes her friends have done the same.

They never should have split up, but in the end they weren't given a choice. Noah disappeared first, and she could feel him there with them still but his fate was to be decided by the actions of others. That's true helplessness, she remembers thinking. Dead seven years and still not free from other people deciding your fate.

Cabeswater split them like an ax splits wood, and they fell into the earth alone. They knew it was coming, knew they all had their own tasks to finish, but Blue couldn't remember ever being as scared as she was that first moment alone.

What is a mirror left alone, after all?

_Though wise men at their end know dark is right,_  
_Because their words had forked no lightning they  
_ _Do not go gentle into that good night._

She remembers right before they were split, Gansey turning to her with that look in his eye, and she remembers thinking he looked like a king more in that moment than ever before, something untouchable in his eyes.

He kissed her before she had a moment to protest, and she heard Ronan's harsh curse and Adam's sharp intake of breath and she wanted to push him away but if this was it, if this was the one kiss they got, she wasn't going to be the one to end it.

And then he'd pulled away, and whispered into her ear that he knew he was going to die, but maybe not forever, and he'd thanked her. For everything. And she'd felt the horror in her well up, wondering how long he'd known, replaying the last few months, trying to pinpoint where her or Adam had slipped up, how long had Gansey been weaving his own funeral shroud, and she'd been trying to find her words when the world shook and they were all pulled apart. Her lips still burn with the heat of him, and she wants to close her eyes and remember, but she won't look away from the horizon, which she can just see from her hiding place in the rock, peeking through the trees. It's beginning to get light.

She used to think there was nothing Gansey couldn't ask for and receive, if he used the right words. The very world seemed to bend to his will, taming wild raven boys and bringing dead things back to life, and she wants to believe that if he just found the right ones to use, if he just created the right storm and lit the sky up with the power of his voice, the world would answer as thunder and he'd be alive when the sun came up.

_Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright_  
_Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  
_ _Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

Noah, who always worried about not doing enough, not _being_ enough. He said he had been more, when he had been alive. He never felt like he was enough, like he was giving enough to them all, even when he had nothing to give at all. Blue remembers a destroyed office and soil under her fingernails and her first kiss. Noah, a boy who didn't even exist, really, who held all their secrets like they were something precious, something to be protected. Noah, who said he was not enough but was better than any of them. Noah, who deserved more. Noah, who had been killed by his best friend, left alone to die in green woods that were waiting for someone but not for him. Noah, who she would remember for the rest of her life. But he deserved more than to be remembered. Deserves. She wants a chance to give him that, to see his eyes light up at the little things all of them take for granted, like how beautiful something can be when it catches the light.

She wants to hold his hand and feel warmth that has nothing to do with the power in her, and all to do with the heart in him.

It could happen. He could be out there right now, feeling the beginning of a sunrise on his skin for the first time in years.

He could.

_Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,_  
_And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,  
_ _Do not go gentle into that good night._

Ronan has never done anything gentle in his life, she thinks, but then corrects herself, remembering how he held a crow chick, how he looked at Adam when he thought no one was looking. Ronan, the fighter. Ronan, the war. The one who was least likely to fall, but tried and tried again to fall in the place of his friends. She remembers the fear behind her, him screaming at the forest around them that he needs them to live. Ronan did the impossible and saw nothing magical in it, but looked at his friends like they were the stuff one couldn't even dream up. She had thought she hated him, for a while there. She hadn't understood. They were very similar, the two of them, something she would never say out loud. If - _when_ \- she saw him again, she would punch him, for whatever self sacrificing bullshit he had no doubt pulled, because she had been standing next to him when the world shook apart, she had seen where he had fallen, knew that he had changed the game so that he had the most dangerous path.

Ronan, who doesn't seem to understand yet that he is allowed to be happy. She is going to make him understand this, even if she has to beat it into him.

Ronan is a dark boy, but he is made for the light. He knows how to find it, follow it through. He'll be there when the sun rises. He has to be.

_Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight_  
_Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  
_ _Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

Adam, who she has seen go far away and come back again, who looks old in a way different than Gansey's ageless royalty. Adam, who knows exactly how heavy the world is, and carries it with cracked nails and bruised shoulders, who came out of the dirt of their hometown and scrubs his hands hard enough to make the skin split because he's so scared of carrying that dirt with him. Adam, who knows what death looks like too, who has seen someone he loved bleed out in a church and has carried the looming death of his best friend with him for months. Who sees so much and yet ignores what's in front of him, and she knows because she's been doing it too, because love is terrifying, because they know exactly what it looks like when it goes awry. Adam, who she knew first but knows the least, now. She wants to relearn him, wants to be given a chance, wants to see what he looks like when his burden is lighter. She wants to sit across from him and tell him why she didn't reach out across those last few inches, when they danced together. Wants to watch him live long enough to learn how to stand up straight and be unafraid of taking up space.

Adam, who breathes with lungs like roots and has the shadow of leaves on his skin even when there is no sun. Adam, who gave up his life already, and was given it back. Adam, who reads the cards and sees the pulse of the world. Adam, who is learning to be angry. She hopes he found it in the darkness, the rage that he needed to escape the darkness he carries.

She sits and holds herself, and she does not pray. She watches the sun rise and hopes that when she breathes in, four sets of lungs match hers.

Her boys are not ones for going gentle, and neither is she. So she breathes, and with every breath the sky gets brighter, and the forest gets smaller, and hope grows.

The night is ending. She will see them all soon.

_Do not go gentle into that good night._   
_Rage, rage against the dying of the light._


End file.
